“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
Little Women
My rating
5 / 5
Author
Louisa May Alcott
Publisher
Gatsby and Gray
Genre
Classic Fiction
Number of Pages
650
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Summary
Little Women is the story of four sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
They were once rich, but when the story begins, due to some unfortunate turn of events they have lost all the wealth and live on the bare minimum, with their mother and Hannah, their domestic help. Their father is away to serve the army and the girls are quite young with the eldest Meg being sixteen or seventeen.
The story ends with all of them getting married and settled. But it is during this coming of age that so many things happen – love, heartache, injury, disease, death, travel, separation, growing up, life lessons, learning to earn a livelihood while finding their passion and so much more.
We also get introduced to some charming characters like Laurie, Mr. Laurence, Mr. Brooke, and Aunt March who become a constant source of support and love for the exquisite little family.
My Review
What I and in my opinion any reader will love about the novel is the constant advice and support the girls seek among each other and with their mother, whenever they find themselves in a difficult situation. Indirectly readers will receive beautiful life lessons in every theme imaginable like – facing poverty and hardship with dignity, living with grace and independence in spite of the pitfalls, about love, sibling relationship, family responsibilities, marriage, friendship, and so on.
The sisters have been the object of immense love since their creation and continue to woo newer readers the world over.
Meg the eldest and the most beautiful feels discontent in her early years at their poverty but events lead her to learn that love and family stand above all. Jo is radical, independent, and an author in the making and is the one winning everyone over with her quick wit and humor. Beth, the sweetest but the timidest and frail has a love for music that lights a spark in her. And Amy the youngest and the most spoiled and vain of all grow into a beautiful, elegant, and most wise young wife.
Laurie, the most adorable boy in the novel is the girls’ neighbor and their most coveted friend. The turmoil he goes through when choosing love and marriage is beautifully depicted and with completely justifiable reasons.
Final verdict
If there is a book about family values that you should read, read Little Women. If there is a book about friendship or sisterly love that you should read, read Little Women. If there is any classic you must read, it is this one. In short, read the book.
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Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and May were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher, Bronson Alcott and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.
Like her character, Jo March in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy: "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, " and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences...."
For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends.
Louisa’s career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. In 1854, when she was 22, her first book Flower Fables was published. A milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches (1863) based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, DC as a nurse during the Civil War.
When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher Thomas Niles in Boston asked her to write "a book for girls." Little Women was written at Orchard House from May to July 1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil War New England.
In all, Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories.
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